Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And I'm joined today with the founder of a company I met a little while back, and I'm super excited to have him here, AJ Alathwala. How are you? Very good, George. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this is really good because it's very appropriately timed. So for those of you that do not know AJ, he is the CEO and co-founder of Eclistotech, which is a digital marketing and software agency. He's got a ton of experience, you know, a couple of decades in web dev, SEO, lead generation, SaaS. And he's built online presidencies for like 250 different companies that I know, brands worldwide. He's got an amazing background. But today we want to talk about this topic of AI engine optimization and AI search. So before we do that, AJ, can you give everyone a little bit of a buildup as to why you went into this space? Your background, we don't have to talk a ton, but like just your journey, what took you into tech and where you're at right now. Absolutely. So, George, when we first started, you know, we were just a website development company and we were cranking out websites. And at the time, it was just websites. You know, there was no SEO. There was no nothing. You know, it was where you have a website, you are getting traffic. And that is when the world did not have billions and billions of websites out there. And now things have changed a lot. If you're not proactively attracting traffic to what you're doing online, your online presence, then you're going to be missed, right? So that's why we got very passionate about making sure that what we build, what we do gets eyeballs. Otherwise, why build in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's, I think a lot of founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, they have an idea of what they think SEO is. And not only has search engine optimization changed, but they also had this impression that it was a long-term strategy and that maybe they would get around to it someday versus right now. So maybe you could take a few minutes and just talk to us a little bit about what SEO is and why it's changing. What's changing about it, which is leading us to this new AI marketplace? Of course, SEO or search engine optimization has been out there for a while, right? Search engine optimization started off as just stuffing a bunch of keywords about your products and your services in your website. And Google Crawler at the time was able to, you know, as it crawls the internet, pick up these keywords and meta descriptions out of your website and then index in the Google search engine. And so when users are searching for relevant information, your website will get picked up if that's what they're looking for. And then over the years, things have changed quite a bit where now people are talking to Siri, people are talking to Clon, people are talking to ChatGPT, Gemini, I can keep on going on with their names. And now you want to be the zero result. It's not even a ranking that you want to be the authority. and so SEO has led into the world which we are in now but you know kind of going back to SEO a little bit it evolved from just you know keyword stuffing to creating company articles and these articles then they had to be keyword stuffed and then some the algorithm kept on changing and when I say the algorithm the search algorithm because Google's job is to get the most relevant information at the shortest amount of time to a user, right? That's what that's, they are in the business of search. Yeah. They are doing that. And we as developers want to make sure that we provide them the necessary tools. So we make their job easier. And I say their job, Google crawlers job easier. Yes. To be visible for people out there. And I do think that's why a lot of people, they think of like optimizing content and stuff as a secondary strategy, but I talk with a lot of our clients and a lot of people I've found over the years that have made the biggest success. It's people that think strategically about what they're putting into the market, whether it's your website, articles, content. And now you're saying we're evolving to this place where it's not just important because it gets you visible, but it'll get you found as well. Because with AI and with the AI tools and AI search and algorithms, things are changing. It's much like social media. You used to just have to build some followers. Now you can place content in social media and get found by the algorithm. And that's a big difference maker. And it also means it's not a long-term strategy. This is stuff you have to start with. And SEO kind of, it should always have been something you started with because you want to be talking and doing and being around things that people are looking for, not just trying to get people to watch your stuff by stuffing keywords and things in, right? So what's changing about the nature of even search online right now. Yeah. So you touched a really good point there, right? SEO is definitely a long-term strategy. It's not a short-term strategy. A short-term strategy is running Google ads or running ads on Facebook. It can become a long-term strategy too, but you have to remember the moment you turn off your ads, you're going to have zero visibility, right? Difference in SEO is it's a long-term strategy. You are pushing a lot of content and you are doing all this SEO work to start turning these big, heavy Google wheels. And they are hard to turn or get to turn. But once you get them turning, you get momentum. So after that, all you have to do is, you know, keep on giving a little push and then they just keep on delivering for you. And yeah. And AJ, I was going to mention, I think that's a really good point to point down on is what people don't realize is that The time they spend with SEO is a legacy asset Meaning Dan Kennedy with Mark one of the best marketers of all time had said if you not building your authority and your brand capacity you neglecting an asset So like you said, you could put time into SEO and it will pay off time and time again, whereas paid ads or social media, you stop it, nobody's going to even see you. So there is a long-term benefit, which is why it needs to be a strategy if you're listening to this. So keep going on where it's moving to now. No, so absolutely right. That should be the strategy. And then we tell whomever we work with, just don't expect this to start showing results within 30 days. It actually takes typically around 60 days. You can start seeing results in 30 days if you don't have a lot of competition. But if you have a lot of competition, a lot of people do these days. In your particular niche, you will start seeing results in 60 to 90 days. So it's definitely a long game. It's not a short game. Again, the benefit is once you start working on it, it's going to keep on reaping benefits too. So it's definitely a long game, unlike running the ads. So where it's heading now is a lot of folks are using ChatGPT, Gemini, and asking questions. So you want to be the reference. These AI engines are referencing, right? So you need to, you basically want to become the number one authority because whenever you get in results from ChatGPT or Gemini or any other AI tools, it'll put a little link to where it found the information from. And that's where you want to be. And that's how you can create leads coming to your business. If you're a business owner, if you have a product, that's how you will get product sales because now you are positioning these products and services within the chat engines people are using on a daily basis. And I actually recently saw a statistic that there is over a billion inquiries in Chagipiti alone daily. Wow. Billion inquiries daily just in Chagipiti. And all you need to do is make sure you're the person that's brought up in those. Like the traffic's there already. Traffic is there. Think of it as a back in the day, not even back in the day, even now, why would you market your short-term rental in Airbnb or Verbo? Because the marketplace is already there. Why would you put stuff in Etsy? Because Etsy has already built this marketplace. And back in the day, eBay. The marketplaces are already there. So you just need to get in there and become the number one thing. Amazon is there. Right now, if you're on Amazon, maybe you're not making a lot of profit by being on Amazon, but if you are the first few products, what are the products that you're selling? You're going to, you have a captive audience. Volume. Yeah, volume, traffic. So as you're talking about this, you've used a term AEO, which is that evolution of SEO, but it's something different. So maybe you could clearly, people are hearing this term, answer engine optimization. Can you explain to us what the difference is from a strategic standpoint? Like what is the difference between an SEO strategy and an AEO strategy? So AEO is built on top of SEO. A lot of people think that, you know, AEO is a completely separate thing that you need to do. Not really. When you do SEO work, if you are thinking about how this ads engines or chat engines are looking at the information that is already out there. Now you're doing AEO, right? So when we help someone. So is it like you're optimizing for AI or your SEO strategy? Right. Optimizing, you're optimizing for both. You're optimizing for Google as well as for AI chat engines, right? And then here are some key things that someone can do by, by yourself to make sure that you are attracting this traffic. Back in the day in websites, we had a section called FAQ. You all remember, right? No, we all had FAQs, right? Frequently asked questions. That stuff is coming back because we're providing concise answers to direct questions. When people go to chat engines, they ask direct questions and they want direct answers. The AI chat engines basically discover through the internet and whatever the other online platforms that are out there. And then it takes an answer and provides that answer as this is the answer. what you want to do is you want to create a list of questions say if you are i just you know come up with a plumbing business right if you are a plumber what are the questions that someone would be asking from chat gpt where your business would show up right these are not questions about who is the best plumber in my area it's really not those kind of questions but they'll be asking questions It's like very specific. My toilet is not flushing or my water heater is not working because it's so cold out there. What do I do? Yeah, this is key. This is key because it's not FAQs about you and your company. And it's not just FAQs that you would think be logical. It's providing answers to questions that are being searched. And so that's a strategy, right? That takes some strategic input. Yeah. And then easiest, a lot of business owners think, okay, how do I come up with these questions? How do I know the questions the people are asking? Ask ChetGPT. Just ask ChetGPT. Hey, one of the 10 questions someone would be asking about my business and then put your website address. Now, that's another conversation. You got to make sure you have a polished and modern website with great information in there. You know, there's something called bad things in, bad things out, right? So you put in garbage in garbage out, right? So you can't start there. So make sure you have a polished website. So if you have all of that, then you will feed it to chat GPT and chat GPT will basically spit out the 10 questions you want to put in your website where it will reference those exact answers for those questions Yeah that amazing I love that And I think well that just like one strategy that gives a very tangible example for our listeners as to how you can incorporate this AEO. But I'm curious, you've mentioned this before to me, you feel there's a first mover advantage when it comes to AI search. What do you think is the reason for that? Is the timing right? Are they already behind the game? Tell us about what you feel is the advantage right now to really focusing on this AI search area. I think the advantage is not many people know about this, right? It's like when, you know, emails first came into place, right? And no one knew about email or people kind of knew about email or when social media first came out, people kind of knew about it and everyone's like, no, I don't need it. You know, I don't want it. I'll never get on that platform. However, look at us today, right? You know, we can't stop scrolling. Like that, people are going to adopt technology real quick. So if you don't adapt it, or if you don't adapt the software or the technology to your own advantage, someone else will first. So if someone else does it first, then as you go into it, then you have now another horse in front of you, right? If you're on a horse race, and there's another horse in front of you. Now you have to, you have to be the guy or gal to, you know, go past that horse. If you are the first one in there, then all you have to do is keep on maintaining it. And then because you have that first more advantage, you have already built a bunch of content behind you and you can keep on adding to that mountain of content. And it's so much easier than trying to create another mountain right next to this big mountain. Yeah. Yeah, no, it does. It does. And I think it does stack on top of each other. So over time, you get more and more benefit and that flywheel is starting to happen more and more. What are some of the mistakes that people are making? Because I see, you know, people will slightly adopt a strategy, like we say, do social media. So they'll put a bunch of just images and pictures and they're not really doing it right. We tell them do SEO and they might throw in some keywords, but really to do it right, What are some mistakes that businesses are making when they are relying on outdated SEO strategy or they're doing things right now that maybe not isn't really helping them, even though they think it is? We just have to have the realization that technology, the technology that is out there right now is a lot smarter than how we think and how we operate. and it'll get even more smarter within the next couple of years. I just heard Elon Musk mention that the AI will be a lot smarter than the entire humans put together in a couple of years. It's insane. I heard that. You don't even think like that, right? Yeah. All I'm saying is that if you think that you can trick AI, you're losing game, right? So we all have heard that don't stop keywords because that used to work at some point. and it doesn't work now, right? So just senselessly, senselessly stuffing keywords won't work when it comes to AI. Senselessly writing FAQs won't, you know, work. So one of the, some of the strategies is when you write the FAQs, there's something called a schema markup. So it's basically a layer, the translation layer between what you put on a website and what a Google search algorithm will understand. you got to put that layer in. So this is, so it's a little technical thing that you got to do. But if you don't do it, then just because you have some FAQs out there doesn't mean that the Google crawlers will pick out on your information. But I will share this with you. Another really easy to implement by yourself strategy is all those FAQs, take all of that and plug it into your Google My Business profile. Most businesses have a Google My Business profile. If you go to Google My Business profile, there's a section called Q&A. So take all those questions that you got out of ChatGPT about the ones that you should be putting in your website, plug them in and the answers, make sure you have all of that going on. And the third strategy is, a lot of people are not doing this because they haven't really heard about this platform. There's a platform called Reddit. And if you look at the answers that are referenced from ChatGPT, most most of them are referenced into reddit start going in there just like how you are using facebook or instagram or any other social media platform create an account start getting on reddit start commenting on things and just anything that is obviously relevant to the niche that you are in and that'll help you to get your information out there as long as you are talking up your business or whatever the program that you have to offer, start talking about it in Reddit. And you will be amazed the amount of references that you will build up for your business or your service or your products in Reddit. And that gets referenced by ChatGVD. Yeah, that's huge. And I'm not a big, I don't have a lot of knowledge on Reddit, but I had heard something recently that like when it comes to, like you said about the billion searches in chat, when it comes to online traffic, eyeballs, visibility, communication, And Reddit is literally ranked up there as one of the top communication type platforms. It's very, very underutilized. I think very few people understand that. So yeah, those are great strategies. I love you that you've shared those. I love that. Where would somebody, if they said, okay, I love this idea and I understand AEO is where I've got to be looking. It's not just search and keywords, it's answers and answer engine optimization. Where do they start? Like where's a great place for them to start educating or implementing from the standpoint besides these strategies you have? Like where would you ask, where would you have a business recommended to start overall besides those strategies to learn and grow? Yeah, I mean, I would say they can always reference our blog at Callisto Tech. We have a ton of information out there. It's all free. There no paywall or anything like that Just go to callistotech It K and look for Calisto articles We call them Calisto articles And once you go there you will see a ton of information about how you can approach getting up on SEO, getting up on AEO. So that would be one of the places I would definitely ask a lot of folks to go and check out. No, that's great. I appreciate that. And I'll put a lot of those, if you're listening to this, I'll put those notes, I'll put those links in the show notes. But what is, where do you see AI heading? That's kind of the last question I really wanted to hit you with is, where do you see things going in the next one to two years? Because I have seen in the last 60 days, building websites, like everything is changing so fast. What do you see? What's your vision of where things are going over the next couple of years? I think, you know, AI is right now taking away the creativity of people and making them faster in their mind while making them not so smart. So AI will be positioned in a way where AI will help people to become more creative. And when I say creative, just from a thought process, from a reflection standpoint, How do you become more reflective on everything that you are interacting with AI rather than just taking everything that is thrown at you as this is the godly answer, right? This is it. It's written in stone because AI finds that information also from another place. so it just it's gonna make people realize that you have to be more creative and you have to kind of you know put your spin on things or you know start being creative beyond what ai will do because ai will be everywhere and anywhere but i think you know air will curtail that the because you know it can help a lot of people do things faster but maybe not in the smartest way i agree with you A thousand percent. Yeah. And I actually have experienced that even recently because I do think it also people start to get a little too confident. In other words, you can go to chat and you can say, help me build a strategy for blah, blah, blah and get some marketing. But it's the person with some experience and background and time tested strategies that can say great output, but you didn't take into consideration this. And what about that? And what about that? So knowledge also and your interpretation of that output. is super important. That's why I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, I could just do all this stuff on my own because I'll just go to chat and I'll just ask the question and they'll give me the stuff to do. But you don't have any basis of application and strategy. So I always tell people, when you can get around the right people, it's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show and you can learn and grow, you can get the basic fundamental. It's like content has become free and easy to use now. it's the interpretation and application of that content that is key. And so it's good to be around others and not assume you know everything just because you have access to Google and chat or Claude or whatever. I've seen that over and over. So that's awesome, man. I appreciate you spending some time on the podcast today. Now, I don't have any paid ads and things on this show, but I had kind of asked you before we got going, and I hardly ever do this, but for those of you listening. I know this is such a fundamental need in your business that I asked AJ if he'd kind of help us out, give us some deals and things like that. So could you just do a real quick explanation as to what you have available for our audience? Because they've never heard me pitch anything, but this is something I really want them to go check out. So what is it that you put together for us? We put together a SEO offer where we help people with getting more leads in. And we obviously, without getting into too many details, our team SEO package, where we get them 10% more impressions, 10% more eyeballs. And we have a regular price at around $1,000. But through you, we are giving it for 50% off. That's a huge promotion that we are running. And then typically we charge around $1,000 for just the setup. And we are waiving that off completely as well. So there's no setup fee and it's just $4.97 a month. And we only ask for just a three-month commitment so we can show you results. And after that, it's month to month. So there's no long six-month contract or a one-year contract or anything like that. It's literally month to month. But we just ask for a three-month timeline for us so we can show you the results and we show our colors. Yeah, I think that's super smart because like anything, if you're going to do something, don't dabble, do it. And I appreciate you doing this because I think there's so much more benefit than just the execution by being connected with a group that's been around as long as you guys have and stuff. So listen, we won't spend much time on that. I'm going to put these links in the show notes if you're listening. But AJ, I appreciate you being here. Look forward to talking a little bit more. Is there any last strategy, advice, tactic, anything you'd like to say before we take off? I would say that, you know, don't delay on SEO. It can become a lifeline for you. Just don't delay on SEO. Just get it started. Even if you don't take up on the offer that we talked about, just start SEO. Even whether you do it with us or someone else, do not delay on SEO because that'll put you into the stratosphere. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's like a freight train that's moving forward. All you got to do is jump on. A lot of times, it's not like a heavy lift. You've just got to start doing it. So listen, if you're listening to this show, do me a favor. Share this episode and hit me up on The Daily Mastermind, on Facebook, Instagram, pretty much all the channels. and let me know what it is you're struggling with, what you're winning at. Let's celebrate some wins, but that's why we do this show. It's so you can get that daily mindset, clarity, focus, and discipline, but also so you can create the life you were meant to live. So I look forward to talking with you more. I appreciate you being on The Daily Mastermind, and we'll talk with you soon. Have a great day.
